I hide.&nbs.  On nice days I stay inside and read.  I like dark winter days when the ground is brighter than the sky.  You wouldn't like me.  You probably don't like my writing.  I am a classically depressed person. 

Summer brings to me the annual chore of fighting to stay withdrawn and numb and safe.  But yesterday I went to the beach, Hampton Beach, in New Hampshire.  The warm balmy air filled with the scent of fried dough... and the gleeish squals of children mixing with the surf... and bare skin, smooth tanned teenage skin... There is no safe harbor for me at the beach.  Every sight and every sound is a warm seductress calling me to come out of my shaded life, luring me kindly out onto the bright boulevard.  Oh, fearless reckless beautiful summer, I am in love with my longing for you. 

I had to get up earlier than I usually do, Irene picked me up at 9:15 AM; I work with Irene, I met her in December.  And I had to sit next to Irene for a hundred and twenty miles, in a purely social context, without any of the chaos of work to distract and buffer, and with only a cup of well-insulated Dunkin Donuts coffee to occupy my hands.  It stayed hot all the way to Newburyport. 

I had forgotten the summers of my single digit years and the day trips when my parents took the five of us kids in the family's station-wagon to Hampton Beach when, fifteen years later as a nineteen year old, I drove there in my own first car with my friends.  And I had already forgotten those teenage excursions to Hampton Beach when Irene brought me there again yesterday. 

Great Boar's Head brought all three eras together for me at once--my childhood, my coming of age, and my self now.  I looked at it yesterday, and I saw it in my memory from when I was five years old, and again from when I was nineteen.  A high cliff, it stands in the near-distance to the north, jutting out into the sea, but looking back at us with a sideways glance which seems smug at times, as if knowing why we timidly came to visit to the edge of landlife.  But every now and then, the cliff seems to me to be furtive in its glance back at us on the beach, as if secretely looking for some assurance that it does not approach the unknown alone. 

We drove around--Irene and I--looking at all the beach houses--the mansions and the camps.  Then, further along Route 1A in Rye, we stopped and collected seashells at low tide from among the slippery boulders in the bright sun. 

Back at Hampton Irene had calamari and I had fried clams, and we napped the afternoon away on the beach.  There were tanned, trim bodies laying sprinkled on the sand like jimmies on a donut.  Irene and I settled right next to the spot where a painfully beautiful stud, fully exposed all but for a tantalizing bit, lay beside his girlfriend sunning himself.  It was easy to get burned on the beach yesterday, but the water was cold, painfully cold--it was 51 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday (I don't care what that is in Celsius).  And I think that saved me. 

Once you get used to the pain, the beach can be quite a frolick. 

Global Trash Hash Hymnal - Roll Me Over in the Clover

Well, the Supreme's have done it again!  (I know this is not healthy, but my cynicism about this president has proven to be so accurate in predicting his administration's behavior that I no longer need my psychic.)  The Supreme Court can no longer claim a place within the Judicial Branch; it has become an agent of the Executive. 

This, apparently, is a New Federalism fashioned by the same people who said that the states should be left alone to do what they want.  That was what they said, until the federal law became their domain when they sucessfully installed an illegitimate president.  These people in power are afloat in a tide of intellectual dishonesty.  Bush, Scalia, Cheney and the like--they can't be trusted. 

But who cares.  I just bought a new iPAQ, and it will be here before supper. 

However, real crimes have never been grounds for impeachment in this nation's capital.  It is painful for us as persons and as citizens to seek a redress of our very real and valid grievances when we know those grievances will be officially discounted because they stir the hatred and the opposition of 'the hating party'. 

"...under the Constitution there may be grounds to impeach...".  Once upon a time. 

Since December 12 we have seen clearly that any ground upon which the Constitution once stood has been eroded by the political sea, like the coast of Chatham, and that formerly solid foundation, now shifty and unstable, moves to suit the strongest, or the most powerful, or simply to suit the ones who are most willing to hate.

Christian Grantham is an excellent writer.  I hate him for it.  He also does some really fabulous web pages.  I obsess over my broken pages and I hate him more.  He is adorable--both physically and socially--and he has sweet Vince for a boyfriend (who is, by the way, one hell of a hotty also). 

I'm going to kill myself. 

But...  there is love.  Wherever love is, there am I also.  And you...  wherever you go, there is my love.  Let us tink the glass, and make the happy couple kiss.  Too soon, too soon.  Always, summer ends too soon. 

Get me another martini. 

This is absolutely astounding.  A removable hard drive for a Compact Flash slot.  Up to 1 GB.

Such coolness in gadgetry is almost moving.  Now I know why I cried affter watching 'Men in Black'.

Bush Protesters arrested in Tampa Bay

What the fuck is this bullshit.  The corralling of free speech is nothing less than bald-faced repression.  We wouldn't tolerate it from an intelligent and accomplished head-of-state; all the more reason we should not tolerate it from this straw-man Bush. 

Let the color=#000099>national news desk and the color=#000099>editorial board at the St Petersburg Times know how you feel about these encroachments on freedom, because a lot of powerful people are encouraging news media to look the other way.